Cinder and Smoke
by Jack E. Peace
Summary: "Fine, but it's your cat. I don't want anything to do with it." "You say that now but soon, Beca, even your heart will melt."


**Disclaimer: **Characters you know don't belong to me. The title comes from the song of the same name by Iron & Wine, mainly because it was the only title I could think of that wasn't completely stupid and I really like the song.

**A/N:** I really can't explain what came over me. I just really wanted to write something cute and fluffy and this is what I came up with. It's pretty pointless, but maybe it'll make you smile. Maybe. Enjoy!

**"Cinder and Smoke" **

"You won't believe what happened at the studio today when what the hell is that." Beca Mitchell stops short, staring at the offending creature currently snoozing on her couch.

Jesse Swanson comes dashing out of the bedroom, his _please_ _don't kill me_ smile already in place. "Hi honey." He puts his arms around her. "How was your day?"

He tries to kiss her but Beca turns her head away and pushes him back. "Um, what the hell is on our couch?" She gives him a look that Jesse swears could freeze Hell. "You better start talking Swanson."

"Okay, so I know you don't like things that are cute or fun or nice," Jesse begins and Beca whacks his arm, "but I think you should hear me out before you say no." He walks over to the couch, rubbing his arm. "Geez. You been working on that right hook?"

Beca crosses her arms over her chest. "Yeah and that was nothing compared to what's going to happen if you don't get that thing out of here."

Jesse picks up the tiny, sleeping fuzz ball and holds it out to Beca. "How can you say that? Look how adorable she is." He grins at Beca, scratching the tiny grey kitten behind the ears. The kitten yawns and stretches and Jesse lets out an unmanly sound. "C'mon. Even you have to admit it's unfairly cute."

Beca arches an eyebrow. "That's not a kitten, that's like a scraggly lump of fur." She looks at the creature. "Where did you even find it?"

"Behind the studio. She was hiding under a dumpster, poor thing." Jesse cuddles the kitten to his cheek.

"Gross." Beca reaches out to push the kitten away from his face. "It's probably filthy. Get it out of here."

Jesse gives her a wounded look. "You really do have a heart of ice. And I already gave her a bath. I used your shampoo." Beca glares at him. "She's just a baby. We can't just leave her outside."

Beca groans. "Jesse, seriously? You want to keep it? You're like a big kid." He grins at her and gives her the puppy dog eyes. "I hate cats."

"Not this cat." Jesse assures her. "This will be the most awesome cat. An aca-awesome cat."

Beca rolls her eyes. "No, Jesse, no." We don't need a cat. We don't need something to take care of."

Jesse holds up the kitten so Beca can get a good look at the fuzzy face. The kitten yawns again. "Please Beca." Jesse imitates a squeaky, high-pitched voice. "I want you to be my human mommy."

"Weirdo." Beca rolls her eyes again. She looks at the kitten and then at Jesse, who has that pleading look on his face. Ugh. She's never been good at saying no to him when he looks at her like that. "Fine." Beca pouts. "But it's your cat. I don't want anything to do with it."

Jesse grins and gives her a kiss, slipping his arm around her waist. "You say that now…" He tries to hand the little grey kitten to her but Beca refuses to hold her. "Soon, Beca, soon even your heart will melt."

"Not likely, dork." Beca remarks. "I'm just not an animal person."

"We'll see." Jesse gives her a knowing smirk that Beca finds really annoying. It makes her just want to prove him wrong.

Jesse drags her to the pet store and spends way too much time (in Beca's opinion) picking out bowls and food and a little box and toys and she's still not jazzed about having all that stuff in the apartment but Jesse looks so excited that it's almost worth it. He insists they get one of those custom made tags and Beca has to suffer through twenty minutes of Jesse trying to decide what to name the little fuzz ball. "Can't you just give it a normal cat name?" She questions after Jesse toys with naming the feline Darth Vader. "You're going to give it a complex." In the end, Jesse consents to naming their new addition Cinder because of the dingy grey fur. The collar that he so painstakingly picked out is so big that it slips right off the cat's neck.

Jesse tries to get the kitten to play while Beca makes dinner but Cinder is more interested in sleeping and cleaning herself. While they're watching _Another Earth_ in bed later that night, Cinder crawls onto Jesse's chest and promptly falls asleep, purring up a storm. Beca glares at the kitten. "That's my spot, fuzz ball."

"There's plenty of me to go around." Jesse says smugly, putting his arm around Beca's shoulders. "No need to fight."

When Beca wakes up the following morning, she finds Cinder curled up on her pillow, staring at her with unassuming eyes. Beca pokes the kitten in the side, trying to prod her off the pillow but Cinder just flicks her tail. "Don't get too comfortable." She tells the cat.

Jesse smiles at her as he walks out of the bathroom. "Aw, see? She likes you."

"Well, I don't like breathing in cat hair while I'm trying to sleep. I'll probably get asthma." Beca complains.

Jesse leans over and kisses her forehead. "Oh, Beca, so dramatic." He gives her another kiss. "It's okay to admit that you love your new daughter."

Beca rolls her eyes. "Please don't call it that. It's a cat. And I wouldn't hold your breath. I already told you I'm _not_ an animal person."

That remains unchanged over the next several weeks. Cinder steadily grows out of her gangly fuzz ball stage and starts to become more playful and energetic. Beca can't count the number of times that she's woken up in the middle of the night to the sensation of tiny claws stabbing into her feet. Even sleeping in socks doesn't help. "That cat hates me Jesse." Beca remarks one morning as she inspects her feet for new wounds.

"Kittens are just playful." Jesse assures her, petting an innocent looking Cinder. "She attacks anything that moves."

"Then why doesn't she ever attack you?" Beca shoots back. "I think it's personal."

Beca suspicions that Cinder is carrying out a personal war are further confirmed when she comes home one day to find a potted plant dumped out on her record player and other mixing equipment. She picks up the empty pot and the now dead plant and stares down at the dirt in the grooves of her player and all over the rest of her expensive equipment. She narrows her eyes, scanning the apartment until she locates Cinder perched on the back of the couch. "You did that on purpose." Yeah, she feels like an idiot for talking to an animal in an empty apartment but she's more than a little pissed right now. "I hate you."

Cinder just casually starts cleaning her paws and Beca really wants to grab the animal by the scruff and toss it on the window. Cats always land on their feet, right?

When Jesse comes home later, he finds Beca still painstakingly trying to get the dirt out of her equipment. "That cat is a pain in the ass, Jesse." She tells him without preamble. "We should get rid of it."

"It was just an accident Bec." Jesse points out. "Cats are curious, they like to get into all kinds of things. She's probably just bored when we're not here all day."

Beca sighs and glances over her shoulder at Cinder, who narrows her gold eyes into slits and flicks her tail. "Three strikes and you're out." She tells the feline. "I'm watching you cat." Again, Cinder just twitches her tail back and forth.

Beca makes sure to keep anything that can be knocked over far away from her desk but she does find a hairball on the seat of her chair. Luckily she notices this before she sits down. Cinder also knocks another plant all over the carpet, though Beca makes Jesse vacuum up that mess. The fact that Cinder's tail puffs up huge and the cat makes a run for the bedroom as soon as the vacuum starts is an added bonus.

For the most part, however, adjusting to life with a furry roommate isn't too difficult. Cinder definitely has a fondness for Jesse and curls up on his chest at every opportunity. She also chases the hair-ties that Jesse tosses across the room, which never fails to make Jesse laugh and if Beca laughs too, well it's only because Jesse's laugh is so infectious.

* * *

Even though Beca has found the weather in California to be a lot less dramatic than the weather she grew up with in Boston or enjoyed (and she uses the word 'enjoyed' loosely here because there's nothing enjoyable about weather in Georgia) while she was at Barden, the minimal shift in temperature as summer gives way to winter always leaves Beca with a sore throat and a stuffy nose. Most of the time she can power through these unfortunate colds but this year she finds herself running a fever and coughing so incessantly that she worries she's going to hack up a lung in addition to feeling like her throat is made of sandpaper and it's impossible to breathe and in spite her most valiant protests, Jesse insists that she stay in bed and take a few days off to rest. "You're not going to get better if you keep pushing yourself." Jesse tells her one morning when she tries to get up and go to work. "Plus, no one at the studio is going to want you spreading your gross germs everywhere."

Aside from the cold he'd had their first year in L.A., Beca has never seen Jesse sick a day in his life, but he takes a sick day anyway in order to keep her company and make sure that she's taking the right kinds of medicine at the right time. She pretends to feel a little better the following morning so Jesse won't feel obligated to use another sick day just to take care of her but around midmorning she really starts regretting that decision. Beca has always been able to gauge how sick she really is based on how much she wants other people around to take care of her; she must be feeling pretty sick at this point because the thought of being alone in the apartment for the next several hours makes her want to bury her face in her pillow and cry.

And if she does start to cry a little, well, you can't really blame her because she has a fever of 101.2 and she's shivering and sweating simultaneously and she really hates being sick. She really just wants Jesse to come home but she's not about to pick up the phone and beg him to leave work early just to take care of her. Also her phone is on the nightstand and getting it would require rolling over and having to reach for it, neither of which sound very appealing.

Cinder hops up onto the bed while Beca is sniffing to herself and she opens one eye to study the feline. "Go ahead, laugh it up." She croaks, feeling too wretched to care that she's talking to a cat. "I'm already miserable enough."

The cat stares at her for a moment, tail twitching, before walking across the mattress and rubbing her face against Beca's. Cinder starts purring, rubbing her body against Beca's shoulders. Beca reaches a hand out from beneath the blanket and scratches the cat behind the ears. Cinder flops down on the bed, curling against Beca's chest and closing her eyes. After a minute, Beca does the same. "This doesn't change anything." She mumbles as she starts to drift off to sleep, resting her hand against Cinder's side. "Consider this a temporary truce."

Jesse cuts out of work early so he can run by Walgreen's to pick up some more cold medicine and tomato soup and stuff for grilled cheese because if there's one thing he loves when he's sick it's comfort food. The apartment is silent when he lets himself in, which he hopes means that Beca has finally stopped coughing long enough to actually get some rest. Jesse eases open the bedroom door and can't stop the smile from spreading across his face when he sees Beca sleeping soundly on her side with Cinder still curled up next to her. He'd take a picture, but he's pretty sure that if Beca ever found out she'd be none too pleased.

Beca stirs, smiling faintly when she notices Jesse standing in the doorway. "You're home early." She mumbles, her voice still thick with sleep.

Jesse smiles at her. "Not really. It's after five." He tells her, coming into the bedroom and easing himself onto the edge of the bed beside her. He rests his hand against her forehead, which is still hot. "Looks like you found a new friend."

Beca looks at Cinder, who is still curled up beside her. "No. She was trying to suffocate me while you were gone." She protests weakly.

"Yeah, that's exactly what it looked like." Jesse says with a laugh, running his fingers gently through Beca's hair. "You guys were totally bonding."

"I refuse to respond to such craziness." Beca mutters, closing her eyes and giving a little hum of contentment as Jesse continues to play with her hair. "I'm not bonding with that fleabag."

And really, she's not about to start bonding with a cat. That's ridiculous. And if she happens to let Cinder sleep on her chest later that night, well, she can't be held accountable for that.

_**End **_


End file.
